On a cool winter's day, 28-year-old artist Libby Black is eyeing a crocodile clutch in Kate Spade on Grant Street. At six feet tall, her dark brown hair as distressed as her denim, Black is a visual assault on this preppy sanctuary of white, pink, and blue; within seconds, a saleswoman begins hovering around her warily.

Admittedly, Black is not there to shop, but she isn't there to steal, either. She's conducting research for her latest project: the re-creation of a Kate Spade boutique using paper, paint, and hot glue for an exhibition at Bay Area Now 4, the showcase for local artists at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, this July. Over the past year, her paper re-creations of luxury icons (a Schwinn bike with a Louis Vuitton-covered seat and Chanel basket, a life-sized Mercedes 280 SL) have made her one of the most promising young Bay Area artists to watch, and the Kate Spade project is among her most ambitious. Gallerist Heather Marx—who first spotted Black's work at her graduation show at CCA—is giving the artist her first major solo show this September, and Black's sculptures and drawings now sell for between $800 and $12,000. 

As Black walks around the store, taking mental snapshots of satin-finished baby bags and pastel-colored satchels, she explains the inspiration behind her work. "If you look good, then you are good—that's the root of my work," she says, noting that she both loves and loathes Spade's line. "If I had this bag, maybe I'd be a better person, and people would treat me better." Black first became fascinated with image and status as a teen in Plano, Texas. Her mother's closets were stuffed with designer shoes, and she "would fluff the pillows right when I got up so it didn't look like I had sat down." Black recalls walking into school, where the parking lot was regularly jammed with BMWs and Mercedeses, and seeing written across lockers in shoe white, "WE'RE NOT SNOBS, WE'RE JUST BETTER."

Her ambivalence about the status derived from possessions has been channeled brilliantly into her playful sculptures, giving her work a complexity far beyond its obvious pop appeal. Says Berin Golonu, assistant visual arts curator at the Yerba Buena Center, "Black transforms accessories into objects of art and frees them of their use value." Her re-creations are more imperfect than perfect and suggest that reputations can be torn or trashed at any moment. 

But Black's own reputation is intact. "She's Duchampian," enthuses Robin Wright, an SFMOMA trustee, referring to Marcel Duchamp, whose work is in the collector's home. Wright recently purchased Black's Prada Perfume—a paper send-up of the actual box and bottle. New York collector and Whitney Museum board member Beth Rudin DeWoody, who stumbled upon Black's work at Miami's Scope Art Fair last December, says Black is "brilliant and has staying power." She purchased Black's replica of a Louis Vuitton toilet kit

(complete with re-creations of Frédéric Fékkai lotion and Savon Doux Nature soap) and placed it in her bathroom. 

Such praise has left Black feeling "slightly uncomfortable." "I like it and I hate it," says the girl from Plano of her newly acquired status in the art world. But of course.